


Journal of Misfits

by WindwiseWords



Series: Clone Culture [8]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clone Sex, Diary/Journal, Future, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Post-Order 66, Sex, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:16:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindwiseWords/pseuds/WindwiseWords
Summary: A Shiny cleaning out an old abandoned ship barracks finds a piece of his history in a tattered old datapad.





	Journal of Misfits

**Author's Note:**

> All of these characters will appear again! Whoo! Set far after the What Never Was, by years.

_My squad is no ordinary squad. We are not ordinance troopers, nor are we the legendary commandos everyone insists exist, and we are not medics. We are a little of all of that, in some ways, and none of it in others. They pushed me over the edge tonight. The response of one was to give me this datapad, a locked device for my thoughts. I don’t see why they bothered to lock it; three of them could hack into this easily._

The Shiny chuckled softly and looked around the old barracks, now used for storage. The broad typed words made him wonder if those that went before him still existed. The words sounded old, before his time, before the Order. Maybe just a written story by a more creative vod. Regardless, he felt a little better at reading the private journal, left unlocked just like the author stated he would.

 

_I suppose I should at least write who I am. You’re supposed to treat these things like a conversation, according to my men. I’m Sergeant Twenty, CT-2220 if you want to look it up. I’m the head of a seven-man squad, and no, that is at no loss of members. They simply gathered up all the freaky brothers and gave them to me._

_That’s entirely by request, by the way. It started with my corporal, Hunter. I guess we started as friends, though he bit me so hard they had to put me in the tank._

_Those ‘genetic abnormalities’ like blue eyes and blond hair are not near par to Hunter. He was a purposeful experiment, some DNA mixed in with animal. He says it was an anooba hound, which explains the jaw strength and the ‘lock on’ focus._

_He specializes in hunting, of course, if the name didn’t give it away. He’s always got my back, and though that first bite made me wary, I still wrestle with him like any vod. The most hilarious thing about him: he’ll roll right over for belly rubs like any hound. Kind of weird, but it makes him relax._

 

The Shiny raised a brow at that. He’d seen some troopers that they found to be modified, but never to the point of bite strength enough to send a trooper to a bacta tank. He touched his own jaws; maybe he inherited some of that?

 

_Hunter’s front teeth came out of the tank mangled. They replaced them. Conscious. I’m sure whoever’s reading this probably knows about the horrors troopers went through under the knife by Kaminoans. They show so little emotion to even each other, so troopers are just machines and tools to them. Hunter knows this best. Even our own medics can’t keep him tied down for an exam, and I’ve a case in my pocket of downers and syringes of tranq dosed out for him at all times._

_Make no mistake: this vod is dangerous as all nine hells. On the occasion we had to fight flesh and blood enemies, the Wolfpack often sent me out with him like a handler. You don’t know terror until you see someone with your face and body tearing into some bug’s armor, teeth and knives preferred. I know that first hand._

_The downers are regular medicine for him, high dose to keep the testosterone at bay among other things. I’ve seen him worked up once, really worked up. He took someone’s finger off. I couldn’t look at him for days and found him with a blaster to his forehead. Turns out that was the worst thing I could do to him, he needed a ‘pack’ as much as Commander Wolffe._

_I regret it to this day._

 

Leaning back against a crate, the trooper looked away from the words to survey the room. He was supposed to clear this stuff out, shuffle it to storage, but getting up with the datapad in hand he wandered the beds and wondered which of these might have been Hunter’s. Twenty’s. Markings, nameplates with several marks. He found one bed wrapped in plastic, and frowned. Maybe it was rotted? He scrolled through the datapad.

 

_Rosewood is our newest member. Now the name is no joke: the vod smells like rosewood oil. Why, I’d never have figured out without him, but it’s a funny and kind of explicit story. If you’re like Shy, don’t read the next bit._

_He’s young, not like Shiny young and he’s got the mass of most troopers. He actually can’t tell us what he does, something to do with data collection or infiltration probably. Regardless he’s no less good a shot than me, so he’s an asset._

_The story comes in during his first day here. Sure, a lot of vode like scented things. It keeps the armor fresh and they’re relatively inexpensive. We all assumed he picked it for his namesake, the tattoos he had showing off his sides definitely were noteworthy. But when he unpacked, there was no sign of any oils or sprays. Nothing at all._

_We ignored it, figured he ran out and we were far from any resupply stations that would sell to clones. It made sense. Hunter got his sniffing in, and that’s when hell broke loose. The vod’s aggressive. Like, pack of enraged Jedi aggressive. But he didn’t go to bite Rosewood, and Rosewood didn’t seem afraid at all. In fact, Hunter cuddled right up to him, which was weird for him to begin with. Those downers really kicked the need for affection out of him. We let it go, just happy he made a friend in a vod._

_Except later in the night we heard… Noises we were all familiar with. Squad ‘bonding’ and all that noise, it was sex. Hunter was a beast in bed, most unable to really get control of him, but Rosewood had no issues with topping for him._

_Again, we let it go. What are we going to say, “It’s weird you can fuck our vod?” Nobody’s going to bring it up. And that morning I went to pull him aside to kind of lay down the rules about Hunter: no touching without permission and never wake him up without armor on your person._

_The next thing I recall is railing him through my bunk. And let me tell you, he knew his way around a hot and bothered brother._

The Shiny swallowed hard and blinked at the words. He was just shy of his ‘talk’ from the medics and wondered if he could have such an experience some day. But as serious as Twenty seemed, that seemed weird he’d react like that. The trooper scrolled.

 

_Rosewood just kind of smiled at me after I came. He didn’t, and perfectly fine with that, worked himself off of me and kissed my lips before stretching out in my bunk. I rolled to lay next to him and just stared. What drug did he slip me?_

_“It’s not your fault, Sergeant. It’s not really mine either, but I’ll take the blame. You can put in my transfer request if you want, sir.” He said it with a smile, but there were… Almost tears. Troopers don’t cry often. I got the impression this guy had been shuffled around a lot._

_“Rosewood is my name because, well, you and your Hunter there noticed my smell, right? I bet everyone has. And this is me on 100 mgs of downers. Medics say it’s a pheromone for the species we’re from.”_

_Mandalorians were not exactly a species, but they were generally a humanoid race. Whatever our dear ‘father’ had mixed in his blood apparently reacted strongly to this scent._

_I asked him if he could wash it off, sounding quite stupid probably because he chuckled. He told me that he’d tried hiding it, but no matter what he does he can’t get other brothers off him. He didn’t mind, since he reacted to his own scent as well, and that left him hot and bothered just about 80% of the day. “Which is fine, because vode come to me. But you’ll get tired of it, and everyone else will too. A tolerance, and then I’ll have to come to you. A lot.”_

_His eyes were sad. I had seen this look before with Blastcap: unwanted and misunderstood._

_I told him he’ll be staying here. I wouldn’t transfer him._

_Five months later he finally believed it when we’d all built a tolerance, and still dogpiled him nearly every day to burn off that tension. He turned out to be great for morale, and not to mention used often to pacify aggressive outbursts from Hunter._

 

The soldier found himself sniffing his shoulder and arms and just in the collar of his chestplate. He couldn’t smell anything, but daringly he leaned to sniff the plastic. A wave of heat hit him and he stumbled back; that was Rosewood’s bunk. He set the datapad down to mark it as ‘biohazard’ with a bright red sticker. They didn’t need the burn crew to be screwing all around the furnaces. Once that was done he settled in to continue his story, looking for information on the other names, starting with Shy.

 

_Shy would be the corporal if it weren’t for his little issue with talking. Meaning he never does. He found his way into my group, several ‘reconditioning’ sessions later, and still resisting talking. Not only that but you’d never catch him with his helmet off, and if you did it was in the showers with that black mask on. A full-face mask, curled into his shower and he quickly left._

_He had nothing to hide, I realized. No terrible scars like Hunter or Blastcap, both of them so disfigured they’d scare kids on relief missions. I had some nasty marks on my leg. He had next to nothing, being a sniper and a damned good one at that. He could fry a droid’s cells from klicks out, on a ‘hunch’ as we learned he called it._

_He talked through hand signs, and rarely made any noises. Mute troopers often made some kind of gasps or grunts but he did not, never anything. Even when Rosewood finally worked his way under his armor._

_If you say him you’d call him beautiful, feathers and thorns trailing down his body in a twined pattern. He had one under each eye, too, the time I saw his face. I’d take it back if I could, he never would look me in the eye after that. For his privacy I won’t say why._

_Eventually his story came out, and he says I can write it here. He was hand picked by his trainer, favored, which left him outcasted by his vode. He was obviously good enough to be placed with the Coruscant Guard, but he wanted to be in the field. The trainer he worked with, never did give a name, turned abusive toward the middle of his training. He was orphaned, essentially, by brothers and masters. He talked then, he said, he asked why._

_The answer itself broke him inside: he was only a pawn in a war, and the chance of him making it off the first shuttle was less than 5%. His vode rejected him in his time of need, telling him to go cry to his teacher. I saw the scars he did have. They were not blasters, but knives, and some kind of whip. He hides them well._

_Shy talks through the hand signs you probably know, adapted to mean so much more. I may make some key for them, but Shy won’t go on video._

_Blastcap is another monster, literally. He calls himself the ‘ordinance in a man’ because he will always have an explosive on him. Always. Trapped in a Separatist prison? He’s got a thermal. Need to pop the bugs in the mess hall tent on a planet? He’s got poppers. Need to destroy half a ship in 30 seconds? He’s got his entire belt rigged to detonate._

_He’s got the scars to prove his work, most of them from rooky mistakes a long time ago. Ordinance troopers have a life expectancy of 4. There is no time unit, just 4. Unless that’s 4 decades, I think he’s passed the 4-year mark. He’s lucky, AND he’s smart._

_But Blastcap gets episodes of pyromania, and they trigger when he’s away from his brothers. Specifically, away from Rosewood, again he calms him down. He’s been diagnosed with brain trauma, and psychopathy but the latter I think is kind of too harsh. He doesn’t care about anything except his brothers. I’ve seen him mouth off something hard to the General and had to beg with him to not put him in lockup. It’d only make it worse._

_Plo’s the best general. Sorry, other sirs, but he gets we’re PEOPLE, not machines._

_Blastcap is pretty good friends with the Twins. I don’t know if I mentioned them yet. Lightning and Thunder. Not much to say about one that you can’t say for the other. Lightning is short for a Clone, and Thunder is a bit taller. They have identical CT numbers with letters on the end, and they are just about as telepathic as a clone can get._

_They’re also just as bad if not worse than Rosewood. They will fuck in every spare moment of time, and every other moment they’re right next to each other side by side. I recall once that we held Thunder down and sent Lightning through a minefield. The lighter trooper was enough to not set off the mines, and of course after Lightning comes Thunder. He entirely avoided the mines, and with his heavy weight was able to actually backpack Blastcap across the line to defuse the signal they were linked to._

_I think they were supposed to be one brother and ended up in two bodies. I suggested this to General Kenobi once, thinking he was the Jedi to ask, and he said it was possible their force signatures were intertwined that much. But clones don’t have much of a force signature, and I doubted Kenobi bothered to investigate._

_They’re over in their bunk snuggling. Lightning is always the ‘big spoon.’ Sometimes they sandwich us in between them. Sometimes I want that bond they have._

 

The trooper frowned as the journal abruptly ended, a few scrawled words about work. It seemed wrong, maybe there were other journals laying about, but the ship was abandoned hastily while landed. Nothing exploded, so it was curious to what happened.

That was a long time ago. The Shiny backpacked the datapad, along with a few other things: a broken muzzle that must’ve been Hunter’s, a few pictures of the troopers long faded but maybe salvageable, and a shoulder pauldron with a blue ring on the outside. This was Twenty’s. He knew it. It was a feeling, and he closed his eyes to imagine the trooper that wore it. Strong, serious, protective of his strange squad. When he opened his eyes, for just a fleeting moment, he swore he saw the shadows of 7 troopers, all milling around the space.

A blink and they were gone, just a musty old room with junk heaped in it. He’d sort it, all of it, and find some history. A rising force in the galaxy, it was about time Troopers had history to call their own. A species now, not just an army, the budding scientists and researchers would love to see a piece of their past. Maybe with this, they could piece together a bit more of their lost story. A little more understanding to who they are, and what they needed to become.


End file.
